


The Ticking Time-Piece

by Oregano_Cactus



Series: Gangster Swap! [1]
Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: ...yes i wrote an isekai, Gen, M/M, banri stabs a man, banri's in denial as always, embarrassingly gay. its. its bad, not terribly graphic but thought i'd tag anyways, rated teen for swearing!, sakyo and izumi only show up briefly!, stupid gay people in love xoxo, the graphic violence is because Banri stabs a man, they share a bed (oh my god they share a bed)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23636032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oregano_Cactus/pseuds/Oregano_Cactus
Summary: "He knows it’s Hyodo beside him, knows it’s him catching him by the arm as they both collapse in an abandoned house after a long period of nonstop running, and as he sinks down, takes comfort in the fact that at least the person beside him is wearing the face of someone he knows."Banri, thanks to some signature Mankai Magic, gets isekai'd into the universe from Autumn Troupe's first play. While he's there, he stabs a man and also figures out that he actually does not want to beat Juza's ass, he actually has a stupid crush on him instead. (Bonus: He meets the play version of Juza and discovers some interesting things about both himself and Juza!) He gets back to his own world and does Gay Deeds.
Relationships: Hyoudou Juuza/Settsu Banri
Series: Gangster Swap! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1710280
Comments: 32
Kudos: 177
Collections: A3 fic recs in case I get asked again





	The Ticking Time-Piece

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy!  
> I wrote this in a daze, so please let me know if there's any typos or anything.  
> Italics indicate speaking/thinking! 
> 
> If you enjoy, please leave a comment/kudos, they really do make my day no matter what <3

It’s been three entire plays, Izumi thinks, and her beloved Autumn Troupe still doesn’t have its shit together. 

Or, rather, it does. It’s just that their leader and his second don’t seem to know how to exercise patience or common sense unless it’s a life or death matter. 

She sits patiently, sneaking a glance at Sakyo as they share the same thought: “ _Should we step in yet? Or is it better to let them fight it out?”_

Banri and Juza’s fight (over what, she doesn’t even know. Maybe Banri said something stupid again?) escalates further, and suddenly Banri’s being shoved against the practice room wall, and Izumi wearily stands up. 

_“You two, calm down. We’re mid-rehearsal, and unless you want to make the entire group suffer for your childishness, save this for later,”_ Sakyo says next to her, and Izumi nods. 

_“Banri, you’re the leader. Try to be a little more patient and polite,”_ she says, and the two boys glare at each other and give her reluctant nods. _“Alright, now take it from the end of Scene 5, line 32…”_

— 

Banri’s walking back to his room, completely and totally pissed. It’s not his fucking fault that Hyodo didn’t know how to act his way out of a paper bag, and refused to listen to him when he was trying to help, and it definitely wasn’t his fault that Hyodo had looked at him like that. Really, what’s Banri supposed to do when someone stares at him looking that fucking pissed? He’s an actor now, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still throw down with anyone he wants to. 

_Not my fault_ , he mutters. 

With his luck, it’s no wonder that he runs into Misumi along the way, clutching various strange items he’s pretty sure he’s seen in the storage room and sprinting at top speed. And of course, he crash-lands on top of Banri, toppling them both over. 

_“Oops! Sorry, Banri!”_ Misumi laughs, and Banri winces as he pulls some crushed old watch that he thinks Winter might’ve used at some point out from under him. _“Aw, it’s broken…But that’s fine! I’m sure it looks even cooler that way,”_ Misumi rambles, and Banri walks away sighing as he hears the pattering sound of Misumi running down the hallway again. 

Of course, it’s when he finally does get back to his room that he remembers—he shares a room with fucking Hyodo. And of course he’s going over the script, basically soaking the page in highlighter ink. 

Maybe if he was feeling more generous, Banri would’ve walked over, draped himself over the spare chair dragged up to the desk, and they would’ve hashed out details like they’d started doing after they’d fucked up that one scene in their second play halfway through. 

He wasn’t feeling generous, after the fucking stupid argument that they had, and he chooses instead to throw himself on his bed and scroll angrily through his phone. Fucking stupid Hyodo, ruining his mood when he had been having a nice day. 

— 

It’s something approaching midnight, according to his phone, and Banri’s about to go fucking insane. 

He’s been trying to sleep for the past hour, switching between his soothing music playlist and this white noise channel, and he still can’t drown out the sound of Hyodo’s pencil scratching and sighs as he works on the script. The single lamp they still have turned on in their room is buzzing, and for a second he idly wonders how Hyodo hasn’t needed glasses yet with these kinds of study habits. 

He endures it for another couple minutes then hoists himself up on one elbow, squinting to make out where his roommate is sitting. _“Do you seriously plan on keeping me awake all night?”_

The scribbling stops, and Hyodo looks up. _“What? Are you still awake?”_

 _“Of course I’m still awake, thanks to your nonstop scribbling! I have class tomorrow, you know, and if you make me look stupid because I didn’t get enough sleep then I’m going to beat your ass,”_ Banri says, furious. 

In response, Hyodo just shrugs. _“Just go sleep in Chigasaki-san’s room. He’s probably still awake anyways.”_

Banri feels like he’s going to tear his own hair out in frustration. _“What I’m trying to say is to stop fucking messing with the script and go to sleep already, so I can get in at least 6 hours of rest!”_

Hyodo just shrugs. 

He feels his blood boil, a bad mixture of sleep deprivation and impulsive anger, and before he knows it he’s raising his voice above a furious whisper and starts yelling: _“If you weren’t such a daikon fucking actor, I wouldn’t be awake right now and neither would you! I frankly don’t care if you suck at acting, y’know, all I want is to be able to sleep in peace for once in my life without hearing you fucking lose it over one goddamn line in a script!”_ He takes a deep breath, failing to notice Hyodo’s expression cracking, and continues. _“God. Why’d I have to room with the worst fucking actor and suffer through this every single night. You don’t even listen to me when I try to help or whatever, it’s like it’s a lost cause.”_

Hyodo stands up, suddenly, and shoves his pencils into his pencil case. Banri pauses in his tirade, just for a second, at the sight. _“Fine. I’ll stop. There. Happy?”_ he says, and as the room is blanketed in moonlight, Banri hears the shuffling sounds of someone crawling into bed. 

He opens and closes his mouth for a second, acutely aware something’s gone wrong, but he can’t manage to articulate it for once in his life and—

He falls asleep before he can quite figure out what to say to Hyodo, turning the scene over and over in his head. 

— 

Banri wakes up the next day in a much more uncomfortable bed than he’d been in before, staring up at a crumbling stucco ceiling instead of the glow-in-the-dark stars that Taichi had stuck on his ceiling as an April Fool’s joke they’d never taken off. 

It’s cramped, and musty, and—most definitely not his own bed that he’d fallen asleep in. 

For a second, he’s seized with brief worry over missing school (Sakyo had been on his ass lately about it), but then—he turns over on his side and realizes he has a much bigger problem. 

Apparently sleeping next to him is Hyodo, curled up on a pillow with some white undershirt that he’s sure he’d never seen Hyodo wear in his fucking life, and— 

His brain short-circuits as he scrambles away from his roommate, and ends up screaming as he hits his head very loudly on the nightstand. 

Hyodo turns over, blindly reaching for a light, while Banri has the biggest crisis of his fucking life. _“...Luciano? What’s going on,”_ Hyodo murmurs, and Banri officially realizes he’s lost it. 

_“This is a dream, this isn’t real, this is a dream, this isn’t real,”_ he chants while Hyodo sits up in bed to squint at him a little more in the dim lighting the lamp provides. 

_“Luciano, come back to sleep. It’s too early for you to be screaming about something weird again,”_ Hyodo says, and Banri looks up. 

_“Stop calling me Luciano! My name’s Banri, asshole, and I should be asking you what’s going on! Why are we sharing a bed, why are we in some shitty motel, who are you, what’s going on—”_ Banri rambles on, voice growing louder, and Hyodo quickly shushes him. 

_“Way too early for your shouting. Be quiet, and I’ll tell you. Also, get back up on the bed, I don’t think you really want to stay on that floor,”_ Hyodo gestures, and Banri scrambles back up on the bed after thinking for a moment about just where he’s currently at. He sits as far away as possible from Hyodo, but it’s not exactly easy to put space between them when he’s pretty sure this bed wasn’t meant for two growing teenagers. 

_“Okay. I’m calling you Luciano ‘cuz that’s your name. I don’t know if you have amnesia or what, but we’re sharing a bed because we both just got kicked out of our job and don’t have enough money to afford two. We’re in a motel because we’re doing a job for someone right now.”_ Banri stares, shell-shocked, as words pour steady out of Hyodo’s mouth. _“I’m Lansky. We work together. We have an operation to do for someone later. Did you forget about that too?”_

Banri nods. _Might as well get all the info I can_ , he thinks and keeps his mouth shut as Hyodo continues. 

_“It’s pretty routine, just going in to intimidate some random group of people because some other group hired us. Whatever. We have guns, we know how to fight, who cares. It’s at noon, so we’re up way too early for this.”_ At that, Hyodo glares at him, and Banri has to fight the instinct to argue back. “ _Are we good now? Can you come back to bed?”_ Hyodo asks as he flops back down, grabbing Banri’s wrist and dragging him down. 

_“I—Wait, hold on—!”_ Banri stutters, but Hyodo’s already gone silent and he’s left alone to sort out everything, thoughts racing. 

Hyodo had called him Luciano, and they were apparently working together. With guns. To do something. They had also apparently been fired a while back, and were now doing odd jobs. 

He doesn’t want to accept it, but—there’s no other explanation. 

Somehow, he’s been pulled into the world from his first play, _The Roman Episode_ , like one of the animes that Itaru loves so much. He hears his own voice echoing back to him, taunting Itaru about how unrealistic those animes were, and groans. Of course it was just like him to tempt fate and have it bite him in the ass. 

He thinks for another couple minutes about what to do, and if it was even possible for him to return to his own world. Itaru had said something about a “trigger” for switching, but he wasn’t even sure that he could find anything like that… 

While he deliberates, he feels his thoughts growing sluggish, and before he knows it, he’s fallen asleep on the uncomfortable bed, once again next to Hyodo. 

— 

Banri wakes up well-rested, stretching like a cat after he hauls himself awake, and is briefly shocked by the sight of Hyodo in a pinstripe suit before realizing— 

Right. He wasn’t at Mankai, he didn’t have an exam in four hours, and he was somehow stranded in a world he had no hope of getting out of. 

Hyodo notices he’s awake and tosses a comb to him, saying, _“I got ready already. Let me know when we can go.”_

Banri half-heartedly goes through the motions, remembering how Yuki had meticulously shown him how to put the costume on, and quickly uses the comb to try to get his hair in order. _“Sure. Ready whenever.”_

Hyodo frowns but hands him his gun, and as the cool metal slides into his hand, he realizes— 

_“Hyodo. I don’t know how to shoot a gun.”_

Hyodo frowns at him, saying, _“Yes you do. That’s your gun, you’re always pissed when I try to take it. And I’m not Hyodo, stop calling me that weird nickname.”_

Banri runs his hand through his hair and laughs a little, hysterically. _“I’m a delinquent, not a fucking criminal. My name is Settsu Banri, I’m an actor, your troupe leader, and if you make me go into wherever we’re going with a fucking gun, I cannot guarantee that I will not accidentally shoot you in the leg.”_

Hyodo stares at him for another long second, before visibly shuttering his eyes and taking the gun from him. _“I…So you weren’t trying to mess with me this morning, huh.”_

Banri sighs in relief. _“Finally! No, I fucking wasn’t! Now can we—”_

He sees the door open, and Hyodo says, _“C’mon. Got a job.”_ Banri gapes, his mouth open wide, and Hyodo just says, _“You can still fight, right? We need money really badly, or we’re sleeping on the streets tonight. Just sit there and look pretty or something, I’ll protect you if I really have to.”_

That’s what gets Banri to shake out of his shock, angrily retorting, _“I don’t need you to fucking protect me! I can protect myself—”,_ and he catches a smug smile on Hyodo’s lips before realizing he’s been fooled. _“...Shit. Whatever. Wait up, idiot.”_

— 

It’s only when they get to the weird warehouse that this is all taking place in that Banri realizes just how far out of his depth he is, and he subconsciously presses himself closer to Hyodo’s side. Fights, for him, were a near-daily way of life—but the people who are glaring at him from the other side of a white line aren’t just teenagers looking for a thrill, they’re real adults who can and will shoot him if something goes wrong. It’s just a little exciting, but the lack of a gun is forefront on his mind, and he knows that going into this place without Hyodo at his side would be essentially suicide. 

They watch as money and something else he doesn’t recognize changes hands, and he knows better than to ask Hyodo— _Lansky_ —what’s going on but god, he really wants to. 

He breathes an unconscious sigh of relief as the two groups step away from each other, and for a brief second, he thinks it’ll all go fine.

But with his track record recently, it definitely doesn’t. 

He turns his back on the other people, making to walk out of the warehouse, and hears a sharp intake of breath as Hyodo grabs his shoulder and tries to quickly turn him around. In the next second, he hears a cry echo through the building, as someone yells, _“Hey, are you trying to fuckin’ disrespect us? Think we’re beneath you?”_ , and Hyodo quickly spins them both behind a stack of crates. 

_“Fucking—God, Luciano, I thought you’d have the sense to not turn your back on the enemy,”_ Hyodo mutters as he smoothly pulls the gun out from its holster. _“Just stay here, and shout if you’re in trouble. Don’t try to pull shit. Doesn’t really matter how good you are at fighting if the other person has a gun.”_

Banri sits, shocked for the second time in less than twelve hours, as he starts to hear gunshots ping across the metal walls of the warehouse and he crouches to try to stay as hidden as he can while he watches Hyodo weave his way across to try to get at the group currently aiming at them. 

He notices, briefly, that both the people who had been trading the money earlier have sneaked out. Fucking bastards, abandoning their subordinates to fight for them and leaving with the money. He’s pretty sure that everyone else on his and Hyodo’s “side” has run away with the boss, and as he watches the firefight, he’s almost pissed at this man he doesn’t even know for abandoning them here. 

— 

The more he watches, the more he feels like Hyodo’s losing, and it’s not a fun thing to watch. 

Hyodo has one too many near misses for his liking, it feels like the three clustered on the other side of the warehouse are all just ganging up on him, and—if he’s honest, Banri’s scared that something’s going to happen. He huddles behind the crates, stuck between moving and staying still, paralyzed by inaction. 

He makes his choice after he hears Hyodo cry out in pain, bullet barely grazing his cheek, and Banri stretches out his legs and quickly dashes to the next set of crates scattered around the room in a flash. 

_Stupid, stupid, you’re going to get killed for real and then Sakyo can’t kill you anymore and he’ll kill you because of that,_ he chastises himself, and yet he keeps going, darting around whatever he can find in the warehouse to try to move closer to the opposing group. He’s pretty sure that neither Hyodo nor the other three fuckheads have noticed him yet, fast on his feet as he tends to be, and as he moves he just prays he doesn’t get fucking shot. 

He’s nearly to the crates positioned directly behind the other three, panting slightly from the exertion, when he notices on the floor a knife. Banri’s never used a knife before, that’s edging from no-longer-delinquent territory to straight-up assault, but… 

He picks it up in a swift move, hoping it’ll at least help him hold some sort of edge. 

Another quick dash and he’s directly behind the other three, poised to do something that’ll hopefully help Hyodo. 

Banri sees one of them move to ready their gun, and he decides to make his move. 

In a single move, he darts out behind the stack of old cardboard boxes and hooks the one moving to shoot in a headlock, punching him as hard as he can to follow up. He feels his knuckles sting, feels the skin splitting apart as he punches, but—he notes it distantly, in the back of his mind, his own survival at the front. They tussle, Banri clamping a hand over his opponent’s mouth to try to keep himself as far out of the other two’s eyes as possible. 

The other man goes mostly still and silent after Banri slams him into the concrete ground with a loud _crack_ , in direct contrast with the other two who begin shrieking and aiming, apparently having finally gotten over their shocked silence at seeing one of their own be downed. 

Banri realizes in that moment that he might’ve made a critical error. 

_“Shit, shit, shit, shit,”_ he mutters, and begins to draft his will in his head. Itaru gets his console and games, Sakyo gets his old drama DVDs, and he’s just about to delegate who his clothes go to when he hears a gunshot ring out next to him and he nearly jumps a foot in the air as he watches one of the people approaching him to slump to the ground, red pooling around them. 

He sees Hyodo moving towards him, and prays for a brief moment of respite where he can sort out _what the fuck is going on_ when he sees the third and final person moving towards him as well, and at a much faster speed than Hyodo to boot. 

_“I might have to continue that will,”_ he whispers to himself in a fit of hysterical laughter, and frantically tries to find something to dodge behind. 

It fails. He’s moved out from the crates that were his safety in order to attack the group, and now he’s left stranded as a man with a gun advances on him on what was supposed to be an ordinary Tuesday afternoon at school. He lifts his chin, refusing to go out like a coward and having the thought that maybe if he dies in this world he’ll wake up in the real one, and when he moves to ball up his hands by his sides he feels it knock against something cool and remembers—the knife. 

He keeps his pose, keeps the illusion of a helpless victim, and closes his hand around the handle while he watches the man rush up on him, gun clenched tight in his hand. 

He watches, as the distance between them decreases, and when it hits 10 meters—that’s when he makes his move. 

It’s a stupid plan, half-formulated as a drastic last resort, but whether by some miracle or Banri’s own skill, he finds himself moving towards the other man in a series of quick dashes and finally— 

Burying the knife in his stomach. 

He still feels the bullets pinging over his head, he thinks, and in a foggy haze twists the knife deeper as the other man screams with words he can’t hear anymore. 

The other man’s voice echoes throughout the warehouse, like gunshots. 

He keeps going, hands bright red with both his blood and the man below him now, and all he sees is the silver base of the knife glinting in the sunlight that filters through the murky windows and all he feels is the slipperiness of the handle as it grows slick with another man’s blood. He twists the knife again, nicking himself with the blade, and feels nothing as blood spatters over his shirt as the man coughs. 

It’s never this bright, he thinks, dazed. When he fought Hyodo, he doesn’t remember it being this hot or bright. 

He pulls the knife out again, raising it up, and in the next instant feels hands hauling him to his feet and moving him away from the bright, bright blood. 

_Move_ , Banri distantly registers, and he dutifully obeys as he runs down alleyways he doesn’t recognize and treads paths he doesn’t know. 

— 

He knows it’s Hyodo beside him, knows it’s him catching him by the arm as they both collapse in an abandoned house after a long period of nonstop running, and as he sinks down, takes comfort in the fact that at least the person beside him is wearing the face of someone he knows. 

They both sit quietly, the silence only broken by the sound of retching echoing through the half-crumbled rafters, and Banri registers after a couple seconds that it’s him making those noises. 

He looks down at his hands and all he sees is bright red and silver glinting in the sunlight, his mind finally processing that he’s pushed a knife into another man’s body and he suddenly dashes outside, sprinting to the stream that seems to run through this place. 

Banri kneels next to the stream, and is promptly violently sick into it. 

The water carries the contents of his stomach away quickly, swirling and eddying around the rocks, and he frantically plunges his hands into the cold, scrubbing and scrubbing. He thinks he can see the red on his hands if he looks hard enough, and he scrubs harder, rubbing the skin raw and painful, and as he looks at his hands he thinks he sees the bright red color returning. 

He spends what seems to him like an eternity cleaning his hands off, trying to rid himself of the bright red, before he feels someone come up behind him and grab his arm. 

_“At least let them dry before washing them again,”_ he hears Hyodo say, and he lets himself be led inside the abandoned house again. 

Inside, he sees Hyodo run a hand through his hair and sigh, looking frustrated. _“Shit. I…Dammit. Of course you wouldn’t be used to this. Listen, sometimes we…have to do things we don’t want to do, it’s not your fault that you did this and there…Fuck. There were other people, waiting outside, and they took care of him. It’s not like he’s dead.”_ Hyodo mutters, as an aside, _“How did you react the first time when this happened? What the hell,”_ and Banri just stays silent and rubs at his hands again. 

_“I…Whatever,”_ Hyodo sighs, and Banri feels himself pulled closer to the other’s body warmth. He’s shaking, he notices. He hadn’t realized that until now. 

They stay in the abandoned house until the last golden drippings of sunlight run their course, Banri’s mind both blank and over-full, and as he’s gently moved to the side he absent-mindedly notes that he thinks this is the longest he’s stayed still in Hyodo’s presence. 

Hyodo picks him up, which confuses him until he remembers he’s got his eyes mostly closed and he probably looks like he’s asleep. He feels the cool night air pass over him as they step over the crumbling wooden beams, and for a second he remembers doing an etude with the rest of Autumn troupe at nighttime, laughing at Sakyo trying to reel them in for the late night crowd, and he misses when his biggest worry was passing a test at school. 

Banri hears Hyodo reserve another shitty motel room from his position, and sighs at the thought of an actual bed, as shitty as it might be. A bed is still a bed, he thinks in relief as he hears the key turn. 

— 

Over the next few days, the thought of a specific item to return to his own world is constantly on his mind. It’s not like it isn’t fascinating to explore a world that had only existed on the stage before, but… 

Banri remembers his frantic panic when he thought he’d killed someone and doesn’t exactly wish the experience on everyone. 

For a second he wishes, irrationally, that he’d been transported into Summer Troupe’s world instead: always energetic, always interesting, and _definitely_ gun-free. 

He doesn’t mean it, he thinks in the next instant. He wouldn’t trade Autumn for anything. 

He thinks, every spare second, about just what the object might be that would let him return. _There’s always an object_ , Itaru had said in the middle of an anime binge, and Banri wracks his brain to think of what it might be. 

At the same time, he also deals with how strangely…nice Hyodo is being to him. 

He knows, in the back of his mind, that this isn’t really the same person he knows—Luciano and Lansky have a much stronger bond than whatever he and Hyodo have, and Hyodo would never be this nice to him. But still, someone wearing Hyodo’s face and body being kind is a sight that both amuses him and makes him feel vaguely comforted in equal measure. 

He knows Hyodo is taking on jobs alone, he can tell for sure because he brings food back to their shitty motel room and he looks exhausted, and he feels bad because it’s not like Banri’s useless in a fight—they didn’t call him the top of Hanasaki for nothing—but there’s nothing he can do against men with guns, and it doesn’t seem like Hyodo’s particularly inclined to let him go out again either. 

Sometimes, at night, when Hyodo’s trying to read some book in the dim light and Banri’s fiddling with whatever’s closest at hand, he just talks and talks and talks. He knows he’s trying to fill the gap that normally Taichi or Omi would naturally fill up with their cheerful talk, but he’s not Taichi or Omi so instead he rambles on and on for hours about just what the object might be. 

He thinks Hyodo isn’t listening, but one day while he’s lying in the bed and talking while staring at the ceiling, Hyodo says, _“Maybe it’s something you’re overlooking. Like, something you wouldn’t mess with normally,”_ and Banri sits up in shock. 

_“I—You were actually listening?”_ He says, astonished, and Hyodo nods. 

_“Kinda hard to ignore such a loudmouth.”_

“ _What—Fuck you, Hyodo,”_ Banri says. _“But…You could be right, I don’t really know if it’s anything I mess with normally. There’s some shady stuff going on at Mankai anyways, man, you don’t even know the half of it…”_ He launches into a retelling of Misumi’s story of a time loop, already having grown used to filling up the silence with his own words, and as he looks closer he notices that Hyodo’s nodding every now and then, clearly paying attention. 

Whatever. It’s odd, but whatever. 

He keeps telling his story, keeps speculating and running through the day, and one night, Hyodo stops him mid-story with a _“Say that again.”_

Banri stops, frustrated, but obliges, and Hyodo frowns. _“I mean…it’s unlikely, but you smashed that watch, right? I don’t really know what it looks like, but if it looks fancy then it might be whatever that stupid item is that’s not letting you go back because you smashed it.”_

His eyes light up, feeling hope return for the first time in a long time, and he grabs Hyodo’s hands in excitement. _“Holy shit, I think you might be right! So now I just gotta find the counterpart for…a watch…that I destroyed…”_ He trails off again, realizing the task ahead of him. Shit. 

Hyodo shrugs, nonchalant as always, and says, _“Well, I don’t have any jobs for the next few days, so I can help look,”_ and Banri’s eyes grow wide. 

_“Really?”_ he asks, and Hyodo nods as he turns out the light. _“Then…thanks. And move over, it’s fucking freezing.”_

He’s long gotten rid of his aversion to sleeping in the same bed as Hyodo, having realized that they really don’t have enough money (or heating, apparently) to be embarrassed about it, but his face flushes all the same as he feels Hyodo drape over him like some sorta weird weighted blanket. 

— 

They spend countless hours searching for the watch, Banri fully convinced it must be the same fancy pocket watch as the one he smashed. 

Their searches, to be honest, are largely fruitless—after visiting every antique shop they can get ahold of, their options narrow significantly, and they’re reduced to vaguely attempting to not look like criminals in jewelry stores to try to spot a similar object. 

During their time searching, Banri keeps realizing—the Lansky from this world, he thinks, isn’t terribly different from the Hyodo that Mankai knows. 

He realizes it when he sees Lansky staring for a solid minute through the window of a sweets shop, scaring the worker sweeping, and sighs as he drags him in the shop to buy a bag’s worth of disgusting sugary shit that he’d never get for himself in a million years. 

After that, the realizations spill forward. Lansky in this world is determined, focused, and fiercely loyal—all qualities that he knows Hyodo has, as much as he might hate to admit it. He notes more similarities as time goes on, finding it easier to note Hyodo’s positive qualities as he hangs around near-constantly with this Lansky. It’s almost uncanny how much they share, he thinks, before shaking his head. It’s not really uncanny, he supposes, since Hyodo himself played Lansky. It’s only logical that his own character would leak through. 

They’re walking in the street, waiting their turn to be let into a shop that would be the last spot they checked that night, when Banri has the bright idea to ask a question. _“Hey, I got a question for you.”_ Lansky nods, consenting. _“What was Luciano to you? I know what Hyodo is to me, and what I am to him, but I don’t really know what you two are like—even if he was technically a character that I played.”_

He walks forward another spot, about to say something else before realizing that Lansky isn’t next to him. He turns back, only to spot Lansky completely frozen at the last spot, face uncharacteristically panicked. _“...You good?”_

Lansky shakes himself and walks forward, seemingly breaking out of whatever had gripped him, and settles himself into position. _“Good. You asked what my relationship to Luciano was.”_ Banri nods, curious. _“We’re…partners, is I guess a way to describe it. Friends. We have each other’s backs.”_ It all matched up with the way that Tsuzuru had written it in the play, Banri thought, and didn’t pay attention to the way that Lansky’s face grew increasingly pale and flushed in equal measures after he turned away. 

— 

A week passes, and Banri feels like they’re no closer to the object. He grows increasingly frustrated during his nightly ramblings, talking about giving up hope and wondering if he’d ever find his Mankai Company counterparts in this world if he was forced to stay. 

Lansky listens from his side of the bed, and sometimes interjects with an occasional encouraging word when Banri feels like he’s spiralling too hard. 

It’s a comfortable routine they’ve fallen into, and he almost relishes the feeling before remembering—Lansky’s supposed to have a brother, and he can’t stay here forever. Shouldn’t want to, either, and he doesn’t really. 

It’s just that it’s nice to be in a world with someone who reminds him so much of Hyodo and not be at each other’s throats all the time. 

Lansky doesn’t really seem to mind if he talks about his worries and his fears, there’s no responsibility as the troupe leader to be strong here, and it’s almost relaxing. He thinks, in his weakest moments, that this is what he could’ve had with Hyodo if they both weren’t like how they were, and he tries to convince himself he doesn’t regret the path he’s taken. 

They’re on their last shop for the night, having exhausted all others in the area, when Banri moves to sit down on a box for a bit to catch his breath. Lansky stands over him, looking at the various shops scattered around, and after a couple minutes pass, Banri takes a breath and moves to stand up. _“How many minutes until the shop closes?”_ he asks, and nearly misses the next action Lansky takes. 

Lansky pulls out, from an inside pocket, a silver pocket watch embossed with some names he can’t quite see from here and a date. It’s an entirely ordinary watch, except for one fact: it’s a near identical replica of the one he’d smashed, back at Mankai. 

Banri points, shaking and manages to get out, _“That’s the—That’s the watch, the one that I smashed,”_ and they both freeze in their tracks. 

Lansky looks at him, very slowly, and says, _“You’re sure this is the right one?”._ Banri nods. _“You know what you have to do?”_

Banri holds out his hand for the watch, watching as Lansky places it in his hand, and in the next instant smashes it with the back of his arm as hard as he can against the ground. 

He doesn’t miss the way Lansky flinches a little, and looks at him as he says, _“Did you really have to smash it like that? Shit, Luciano’s gonna be pissed…”_

Still somewhat in shock from finally discovering the object, Banri just stares at him. _“I gotta replicate the action. That’s what Itaru’s animes say. And why would Luciano be mad…?”_ he asks, and Lansky freezes up again. 

_“I…uh…it was an anniversary gift,”_ he says, and Banri’s eyebrows shoot up. 

_“Anniversary of what?”_ he asks, and doesn’t miss the way that Lansky’s fingers start to fidget with a loose thread. 

_“For the anniversary of our…birth.”_

Banri’s eyebrows raise even higher. _“Your birth. Which happens to be on the same day as Luciano’s.”_

_“That’s right.”_

He almost laughs, then, but manages to restrain himself just in time to ask, _“Just tell me if you two are making out or something, I don’t really give a fuck,”_ and doesn’t miss the interesting shade of grey that Lansky’s face turns. 

_“We’re not doing anything,”_ he says too quickly, and Banri finally allows himself to laugh, strangely unbothered by the concept. He chalks it up to his excitement over finally being able to go home. _“We’re not, you know.”_

They make it another few blocks before Lansky cracks. _“We’re not ‘making out’, alright? We’re partners. I already said that.”_ Banri just laughs again. _“You’re so fucking loud,”_ he sighs, and Banri refuses to shut up just for that comment all the way back to their motel room. 

— 

He lies in the bed, huddled close again to Lansky to try to create a makeshift heating system, and stupidly feels his face heat up again as they move closer together to try to conserve what pitiful body heat they can. Stupid, he repeats in his head. Stupid to get attached to this kind of thing. He repeats the mantra of _stupid_ in his head as he goes to sleep, conscious of the warmth around him, and offers up a final prayer that he’ll finally be able to wake up in a world where he didn’t have to fear for his fucking life after this night. 

— 

Banri slowly feels himself wake up, too comfortable to move. 

He’s slow to open his eyes, feeling warmth and a foreign mattress beneath him and hoping, hoping desperately, that he won’t wake up again in a motel room underneath a stucco ceiling. After a long, long moment, he cracks his eyes open, and finds his wish has been granted. He’s never been so glad to see those stupid stars, he thinks, and relishes in the feeling of being back where he belongs when he notices—he’s still not on his own mattress. 

Turning to the side, he sees— 

He sees Hyodo, the one _he_ knows, wrapped around him like an octopus, and Banri embarrassingly repeats the exact same procedure he’d done when he’d first woken up in a foreign place and screams. 

Hyodo blinks awake, staring at Banri two inches away from his face screaming his head off, and just shoves him off the bed. 

_“You fucking dick! Why’d you shove me off the bed, asshole, do you want me to die?”_ Banri yells, and Hyodo just turns around. 

_“I’m tired. Complain or whatever later. We’ll talk then.”_ Effectively shut down, Banri does nothing but stand in the middle of the room, eventually scrambling back to his own bed to try to fall asleep again. 

It’s colder sleeping alone. 

— 

Banri gives him the basics of the details later during the day, leaving out just what exactly he’d done during the time he was away, and they both agree it was an odd experience. Hyodo tells him that he had someone swap too, that it was a weird situation like his but a lot less dangerous. 

It frustrates Banri, not knowing more—it’s obvious that Hyodo’s withholding information from him, but he can’t demand Hyodo reveal any more without exposing his own experiences that he’s reluctant to share. 

Returning back to Mankai isn’t the only change he notices either. 

During rehearsals, he notes Hyodo stepping up more often; asserting himself and helping lead in a way that he hadn’t really done before. It’s strange to watch, to be honest, but he almost finds himself thanking Hyodo for easing some of the burden off him before realizing that wouldn’t be something he normally does. 

Banri still finds himself noting similarities between Hyodo and Lansky, too, and he keeps realizing how uncannily similar they are—except for the fact that he and Hyodo hate each other, and probably will continue to do so for a while. He almost wants Lansky back sometimes, wants the easy familiarity back, and remembers when he thought that he and Hyodo could be like that if it weren’t for everything that had already happened. It frustrates him, remembering what happened, and sometimes at night time he finds himself whispering to a far-too-cold room whatever the hell is on his mind just to let it out. 

A week passes, and he still shivers at night, and even Taichi says something about the odd coldness and tension between him and Hyodo. 

— 

It’s midnight as Banri lies awake, teeth chattering, and he whispers to himself whatever thoughts are on his mind. It’s odd to think he’s picked up a habit in the short time he’d been in another world, but he’s found it to be almost instinctual at this point to ramble at night time and he refuses to give it up at this point, already far too used to the ritual. 

He misses the easy way that Lansky would respond to his comments, the quiet listening ear, and thinks for a second that he’d almost want to be back to that time just for that comfort he had so readily available. 

He mutters it into the room, words flowing out with practiced ease, and in his steady stream of thoughts almost misses what Hyodo says. 

_“Shut up, you’re so damn loud,”_ Hyodo groans, and Banri’s head snaps up. 

_“Just put in earbuds, or go sleep in someone else’s room! I’m just fucking cold, I can’t do anything about that!”_ he whisper-yells back, and Hyodo sighs. 

_“Are you seriously that worried about not talking to me or something?”_ Hyodo says. 

“ _What? No, it’s not like that. How did you even hear that in the first place anyways,”_ Banri mutters, and shifts around on his bed. 

_“I listen to whatever shit you say at night. Kinda hard not to.”_

Banri flushes at that, realizing that he’s been hearing everything he’s been saying. _“Then…”_

He can see Hyodo shrug from here. _“I don’t really mind either way. Whatever, the alternate version of me was nice to you. Alternate you was a lot more high-strung, so they’re probably different in some ways.”_

 _“Lansky kinda reminded me of you a lot, to be honest…”_ Banri says, and then immediately realizes how stupid he sounds as he hears Hyodo laugh in the background. _“Not like that! Just—you know what I mean!”_

Hyodo grows serious for a second, nodding. _“Yeah. Same for me, I guess.”_

The silence grows again, punctuated by Banri’s teeth rattling, and after a couple minutes of the sound Hyodo sighs. 

_“Hey. Come over.”_

Banri sits up, eyes wide. _“What?”_

_“Come over. You keep muttering about how you were sleeping next to someone all the time. If you share a bed with someone you won’t be cold.”_

He sputters, some mixture of embarrassed and indignant, and Hyodo just sighs again. _“Take it or leave it. I don’t mind, you know.”_

— 

In the end, it takes him about an hour to muster up the courage to move a bed over. He shifts on the mattress, oddly finding the feeling of an unfamiliar mattress more comfortable, and automatically wraps himself in the warmth of another person, shivering finally stopped. 

_“Thanks, I guess,”_ Banri says, and Hyodo just nods into his hair and seemingly passes out immediately afterwards. Things really don’t change between worlds, he thinks, and passes out himself soon after. 

— 

It becomes a regular occurrence for them to share a bed after that night, supposedly so Banri doesn’t chatter throughout the entire night, and they’re the subject of much teasing after Taichi barges in on them one morning entirely too early but neither of them really move to stop their arrangement. 

He should find it strange, Banri thinks, but it’s hard to deny that it’s nice to sleep next to someone and he thinks he understands a bit of what Azuma feels. 

Except, he feels weird sometimes whenever he falls asleep, and when he brings it up to Omi (the least likely to tease him, if he’s being honest), Omi just laughs and asks him if he’s ever had a crush before. (He has. He knows what it feels like. He refuses to acknowledge any connection.) 

It’s just something comforting, to be able to just talk at another person at night and to feel a body next to your own, he thinks. Something to help assuage loneliness. Banri pointedly refuses to think about why his face heats up when they get too close. 

He’s lying in bed one night, feeling himself get hotter and hotter as Hyodo slings an arm over his torso like some weird body pillow, and feels more than hears Hyodo laugh quietly. 

_“What’re you laughing for, huh?”_ he says, anger in his voice, and Hyodo responds easily. 

_“You.”_

“ _What? If you’re going to be a dick—”_

_“Nah. Not trying to. I’m just saying, I don’t mind if you wanna kiss me.”_

As seems to be the norm, Banri short-circuits, and the only thing he can even think to say is “ _Wh—”_ as he tries to formulate any coherent thought. 

He can feel Hyodo grinning a shithead grin, and he hears him say, _“You weren’t the only one that talked with the counterpart, you know. He warned me, after he calmed down, that you might be fucking stupid. And also in denial. He mentioned that a lot.”_

Banri says angrily, _“I’m not in denial!”_ and then realizes that he’s fallen into Hyodo’s trap. 

_“Yup. Gotcha,”_ Hyodo says, and Banri agonizes for another minute before giving up. He knows when he’s beaten, at least. 

_“I… Sure, whatever, maybe I don’t think you’re as bad as you used to be,”_ he says, and then remembers another thing that he had on his mind. _“And I apologize for that thing weeks ago where I was being a dickhead. You’re a hard working actor.”_

Hyodo says, _“Maybe we should send you to different worlds more often. You seem more mature,”_ and Banri resists the urge to knock his ass into the next universe. 

_“I can take it back, you know!”_ he says, giving protest. 

_“Sure,”_ Hyodo says, and then kisses him. 

It doesn’t shake the foundations of the earth, it doesn’t make him feel like fireworks are in his stomach, but through his shock Banri realizes: It feels comfortable. It feels warm and comfortable and familiar, like how rambling at night felt. 

He doesn’t stay shocked for long, competitive streak still red-hot, and the only thought on his mind is that he refuses to lose to Hyodo for any reason. 

Banri sits up and kisses Hyodo back, using whatever experience he can to try to beat him at his own game, and before long they’re both grinning like sharks as they compete in what was quite possibly the stupidest reason they’ve ever competed yet. 

Banri opens his mouth, about to taunt Hyodo for losing to him, when he hears the door bang open and Sakyo stands there in all his wrath. 

_“What in God’s name are you two doing? Your talking or whatever woke up the whole floor.”_ Izumi hovers behind him, apparently excited to watch them be murdered. _“Why are your lips bright red—Nevermind. I don’t want to know. Use protection. Don’t keep the dorm up or you’re on cleaning duty for three months,”_ Sakyo says, and pinches the bridge of his nose. Izumi gives them a thumbs up, and all the two of them can do is stare as the door closes and the two of them leave. 

_“...Come back to bed,”_ Hyodo says, apparently already tired enough after the ordeal to go back to sleep, and Banri lets himself be dragged back down. 

_“Whatever,”_ he mutters. _“Sakyo’s just mad he’s not getting some.”_

Hyodo’s already asleep, and Banri allows himself a private grin as he moves back closer to the warmth. 

Just before he falls asleep, he whispers, _“Eat your fucking heart out, Lansky,”_ and somewhere, in a different world, Lansky allows himself the same private grin in return. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and making it all the way to the end!  
> Some fun facts as a reward for making it to the end:  
> \- Juza and Luciano's conversation is something I'm (maaaaaybe) saving for a companion fic to this one ;D)  
> \- Banri tones down his fighting afterwards and everyone's like wtf happened?? and he just says "I Stabbed A Man"  
> \- Juza and Banri are that one post that's like. (shoves you against a locker) (shoves you back) (we start making out) "im sorry did you need something? homophobe"  
> \- World hard and cold Juza warm  
> \- I wrote this at literal 5AM so I started growing a little delirious at the end  
> \- The watch/clock I was mentioning was supposed to be a callback to the Winter play, "The Master Likes A Mystery"! 
> 
> Again, thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed, please don't hesitate to leave kudos/comments! They make me so so happy, and I reread the comments you guys leave for weeks afterwards if I ever need motivation or a pick-me-up. Your comments and kudos keep me writing, so please do those things if you'd like to! <3


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